The new season, announced this morning includes three house premieres of short stage works by Ernst Krenek, on of the most successful inter-War composers, later exiled to Los Angeles.

krenek

Ernst Křenek

Der Diktator (The Dictator / first performance in Frankfurt)

Schwergewicht oder Die Ehre der Nation (Heavyweight or the Honour of the Nation /first performance in Frankfurt)

Das geheime Königreich (The Secret Kingdom / first performance in Frankfurt)

Sunday April 30th 2017

Conductor: Lothar Zagrosek

Director: David Hermann

Stage Designer: Jo Schramm

Costume Designer: Katharina Tasch

A research study by Swiss and British scholars has confirmed what many have long suspected: that classical music critics are clinging to criteria that have long since lost their relevance.

That conclusion must, however, be limited by the study’s terms of reference: the scholars examined 90 years of reviews of the 32 Beethoven sonatas in Gramophone magazine, where past performance is generally prized above present and… nothing ever changes. Here’s the study outline:

What sets a great music performance apart? In this study, we addressed this question through an examination of value judgements in written criticism of recorded performance. One hundred reviews of recordings of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, published in the Gramophone between 1934 and 2010, were analyzed through a three-step qualitative analysis that identified the valence (positive/negative) expressed by critics’ statements and the evaluation criteria that underpinned their judgements. The outcome is a model of the main evaluation criteria used by professional critics: aesthetic properties, including intensity, coherence, and complexity, and achievement-related properties, including sureness, comprehension, and endeavour. The model also emphasizes how critics consider the suitability and balance of these properties across the musical and cultural context of the performance.

And the conclusions?

In line with previous results (Alessandri et al., 2015), the majority of critics’ statements (87.57%) were valence loaded, although the valence was typically mixed within each review, with a combination of positive, negative, and mixed statements. Alongside valence loaded judgements given in the canonical form “Performance P is good/bad because of feature F” numerous judgements were found in the form “P is X,” where X is a performance descriptor that also implies an evaluation by being inherently valence loaded. Despite the richness of performance aspects discussed in reviews—as reported by Alessandri et al. (2015)—the systematic analysis of valence loaded statements and their relationship with performance descriptors found that critics’ evaluations resulted in a model comprising just seven evaluation criteria that were reliably used by all the critics in our review corpus.

Could you simplify that?

The six main critical criteria from our emergent model were used consistently by all ten critics across almost 90 years of reviews covering all of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (100 recordings, at least six recordings for each of the 32 sonatas).

In other words, Gramophone is a model of consistency. Nothing significant has changed in its reviews over 90 years. Read the full study here.

 

music critic cartoon

Arm and leg bones belonging to at least four individuals have been found by workmen clearing asbestos beneath the stage of Cincinnati Music Hall. Coffins were also found in the same area.

It is suspected that part of the hall was built on an abandoned cemetery.

There has been no foul play in the Cincinnati Symphony (below).

CSO_Langree_4322-2_Courtesy-of-the-Cincinnati-Symphony-Orchestra

Tonight’s performance of Tannhauser was dedicated to the memory of Chris Davies, sub principal horn, who died of bowel cancer in February. Chris, who was 53, also played in the Brighton Philharmonic.

Members of the ROH orchestra wore yellow daffodils to commemorate a proud Welshman.chris davies

The former head of the Vienna State Opera, himself a Romanian, has said that the only way out of the calamity in Bucharest, where local artists are calling for foreigners to be thrown out, is for the institution to be abolished and replaced by a new one.

Read here.

holender2

Nathan Cole, associate concertmaster in Los Angeles, has some good advice for people contemplating an audition for an orchestral place. Play to win, he urges. But what if you don’t?

 

nathan cole

 

Let’s make one thing clear right away: to win an audition, you have to play musically. This isn’t power lifting, and you can’t crush the competition with machine-like precision. If you’re going to win, it’s got to be with great violin playing. By definition that’s musical; I’ve never been part of a committee who thought otherwise. So you don’t need to sacrifice creative playing to go for a win.

But what about the slim odds of victory? Let’s say that 150 people take your audition, you all play at an appropriate level, and you’ve all made your goal a win. At least 149 of you will leave the audition having failed to achieve your goal. Yet I believe that this is the healthiest of all possible audition scenarios, for all 150 candidates.

Read on here.

The iPad, apparently.

‘To me, the practice of using a page-turner is a charming relic of an amateur age, when chamber music was largely played by amateurs for amateurs in an amateur setting,’ says pianist Ignat Solzhenitsyn, who will use an iPad in a PCMS May concert with the Aizuri Quartet. ‘Today, page-turning – and it is a role I have performed countless times myself! – is an unwelcome anachronism, putting the pianist constantly on the defensive against potential catastrophe, so that his mind is bent more toward the person to his left than the people to his right.’

Read Peter Dobrin’s fascinating article here. 

Page_turner

 

Uploaded by Steve Purcell, who directed several videos for Prince in the 1990s, the take illustrates the acute musical ear and pianistic facility of the late rock star.

Steve Purcell writes: ‘ This is August 2, 1990 sound check Osaka Japan. I spent six years of my life working for, creating with and laying the foundation for the rest of my career with Prince. Long nights, remote parts of the world and creative growth beyond my wildest dreams. This may not be the Prince you think of but it is the Prince I knew. Those years were and will always remain the highlight of my career. Thanks for the good times RIP Kid. ‘

prince summertime

After cancelling her role debut at Covent Garden this September, the diva has told the Met to forget about Norma in 2017-18.

‘I have come to the unfortunate conclusion my voice has evolved in a different direction,’ she repeated.

anna netrebko

Next month, she sings Elsa in Lohengrin in Dresden. That’s the way she’s heading.

From the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic:

Today is a momentous day at the Hillsborough Inquest for the families and Liverpool! An ITN crew have been in filming footage for Channel 5 news this evening. Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir perform ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in an arrangement by Chorus Master, Ian Tracey first sung in memory of all those who died in the Hillsborough disaster, in the Memorial Service in Liverpool Cathedral, 29 April 1989.

Defy you not to cry.

hillsborough

The conflict has now reached the point of absurdity.

Alina Cojocaru, the country’s most famous dancer and her Danish husband Johan Kobborg have been banned from entering the Bucharest National Opera, along with seven others.

They include the former opera manager George Calin and technical director Emil Popescu.

The forces of xenopobia, led by conductor Tiberiu Soare, appear to be winning this battle.

Romania is returning to dark times. Any foreign artist who is thinking of working there should be aware that those in control have declared them unwanted.

Alina-Cojocaru-and-Johan-Kobborg-500x375

To augment last year’s Oscar for The Grand Hotel Budapest. Alexandre Desplat has won the coveted Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award, a hat-tip to a composing legend.

The award will be presented at the annual Hollywood in Vienna on October 14.

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