We are experiencing very high call volume right now, but if you have tickets for one of today’s performances and are unable to attend, please call us at 212-362-6000 at any point in the next week and we will reschedule your tickets for a future date, pending availability.
Earlier:
Despite the weather, all performances this weekend are scheduled to take place as planned. If you are unable to attend due to weather conditions, please get in touch with us at your earliest convenience by calling 212-362-6000.
Please be aware that we are experiencing increased call volume at the moment; if you cannot get through, please try again at a later date. Thanks and stay safe this weekend.
UPDATE: An hour later, the Met announced the cancellation of Saturday afternoon and evening performances.
Cute video for Detroit’s upcoming Brahms fest.
The second essay on the Future Symphony Institute is by a regular Slipped Disc polemicist, composer John Borstlap.
Sample:
There may be progress in terms of physical means – like the types of pigment used in paint, which became more stable in the last century, or the relatively cheap paper for musical notation that became available with the advent of the 19th century industrial revolution, or the iron fittings in architecture that allowed builders to vault bigger spaces….
But expression, artistic vision, the quality of execution has never been dependent upon the physical means of an art form: Vermeer has not been superseded in terms of artistic quality by Picasso or Pollock, Bach not by Mahler or Boulez, Michelangelo not by Giacometti or Moore, Palladio not by Gropius or Le Corbusier.
And we can appreciate the brilliance of the “primitive” masters of Flanders, who lived before the great surge of 16th century inventions in Italian painting, just as we can the music of Palestrina, who had no clue of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven or Chopin simply because he lived in an earlier time.
‘How many practical uses are there? Practically none…’
Elisabeth Braw has an original take on the shift of power backstage at the opera houses.
These tensions are not surprising. Conductors often want to remain true to the composers’ work, whilst stage directors want to distinguish their productions from those of competitors. Popular operas are produced by multiple houses—“La Traviata”, for example, was performed 749 times during the 2013/2014 season—and so directors feel compelled to add unorthodox elements. Damiano Michieletto, an Italian stage director, was hit by heavy criticism after inserting a graphic rape scene into Verdi’s “Guillaume Tell” at the Royal Opera House in London.
What is to be done about opera’s new divas?…
Read Elisabeth’s suggestions in The Economist here.
Former BBC2 controller Janice Hadlow had a tailored job as Controller of special projects and seasons.
Hadlow is the latest in a string of high-profile, senior executives to leave in quick succession including Kim Shillinglaw, the Controller of BBC2 and BBC4, Director of Television, Danny Cohen, and Alan Yentob as “Creative Director”.
A back-of-an-envelope calculation suggests the BBC has saved almost £1m in salaries. And that is exactly the point. In recent years, the BBC has been derided over management costs; bloated bureaucracy and inefficiency.
With the government’s White Paper on the BBC Charter due for publication in the Spring. Auntie desperately needs some positive headlines about “efficiency savings” to convince the government (and Parliament) – and associated bodies including The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee that she is ‘Value for Money”…
The Microsoft magnate revolutionised the image world in the 1990s by agglomerating a vast resource of archives and photographers, named Corbis, and opening a price war with Getty Images.
Now, both giants have fought their way to the bitter bottom and can’t make their profit targets.
Today, Corbis was sold to Visual China Group, based in Changzhou.
Here’s the detail, and the tortured rationale. One way or other, it’s bad for photographers and artists.
The artist lineup is impressive: Plácido Domingo and Renée Fleming, Midori and Sarah Chang, cellist Nina Kotova, pianist Jean Yves Thibaudet, guitarist Angel Romero, fashion designers Zandra Rhodes, Michael Costello and Marc Bouwer, and chefs Cat Cora, Gail Gand, and the Hearty Boys.
Wissman has what they call history. Longer history here.
Mr&Mrs Wissman
On the annual breakdown of recording sales from Nielsen Soundscan, classical achieved just 1.3 percent of the market, bumping along the bottom with jazz and children’s records.
Even more discouraging, classical and jazz scored the highest proportion of physical sales vs digital, signifying that the consumer sector belongs to an older generation and is out of step with technology.
On a broader front, the mass market was stunned to learn that older catalogue albums outsold new material for the first time since records were kept.
A bleak picture all told. See for yourselves here.
There was a time, not long ago, when a rush release of the New Year’s Day concert cleared 100,000 sales and more.
The first week’s sales of this year’s concert, conducted by Mariss Jansons on the Sony Classical label, achieved just over 400 units, according to Nielsen Soundscan.
She’s been on stage since 1956, at Bayreuth since 1960, and she’s not done yet.
Anja Silja, 75, is reciting what is described as the European premiere of Anton Arenski’s Melodramen-Triptychon op. 68 at the Frankfurt Opera next Tuesday.
The busy, buzzy string quartet known as Brooklyn Rider is making its first change after 10 years.
Cellist Eric Jacobsen is getting to be too successful with the baton – he’s music director of the Greater Bridgeport Symphony and the Orlando Philharmonic – so he’s calling it quits.
The new cellist is Michael Nicolas, a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) and former associate principal cellist of the Montreal Symphony.
