Super surreal concert last night at the NY Phil — an immersive, trippy, bendy & foldy & rigid & fragile & quite powerful première by Ashley Fure, then the Ravel both-hands concerto, then the Rite of Spring! I will say: the acoustics of that hall, for better or for worse, are a really good delivery system for some BRASS directly into the back of your skull — that was FUN.
Dutch critic Peter van der Lint:
Opening Gala Concert met veel Amerikaanse beroemdheden op de rode loper, maar ook BN’ers zoals Paul de Leeuw en echtgenoot. In de matige akoestiek van de David Geffen Hall (voorheen Avery Fisher Hall) kwam Jaap tot mooie resultaten. Hij stond te glunderen na afloop. (Jaap got beautiful results. He was gloating afterwards).
Musician Joseph Alessi:
My 34th season and counting. This September begins the tenure of our new music director Jaap van Zweden our 26th music director and my 5th music director. From the way the concert went this evening, I’m very excited to be under the baton of this very talented conductor and musician. After the concert, my wife Kathie made a delicious pear cake. It was out of this world!
No reviews yet.
It was announced this morning that the excellent dance critic Alastair Macauley will retire at the end of the year. Expert, passionate and impartial, with an impressive memory for detail, he has long been the best read on the culture pages. (The retirement of another critic, long decided, has been mysteriously delayed.)
Message from the culture editor:
Hello everyone:
It is with sadness for the Culture department but delight for him that we announce Alastair Macaulay will retire from his post as chief dance critic of The New York Times at the end of 2018.
Alastair, who joined the paper in 2007, has long been the source of the most informed and passionate dance criticism out there. So why leave, you ask? Being a critic for The New York Times is the best job, you say.
This is true. But the world beckons. For some time now, Alastair — who celebrated 40 years of reviewing this May — has wanted to spend more time in Britain, his home country; scale back on his daily reviewing responsibilities; and work on a variety of projects, including teaching and lecturing at Juilliard, the 92 Street Y and City Center, and a research fellowship with the Center for Ballet and the Arts.
Most important, Alastair is planning to finish his big project — a book on Merce Cunningham — and to start work on, by his own ambitious count, 22 other book ideas that have been gestating during his time as a newspaper critic, including on the choreographers Frederick Ashton and George Balanchine (he twinned them in his 2018 Lincoln Kirstein Lecture) and on Degas’s depiction of dance in his art.
“The challenge of describing something as difficult as dance for the general reader is about as exciting as journalism gets,” Alastair said to me recently. Some of his highlights include:
Two trips he took to India to write about Indian dance. Two pieces out of Memphis on Lil Buck and jookin. This analysis of Michael Jackson’s dancing, written after his death.
A coast-to-coast Nutcracker marathon in which he watched 27 American productions. A 2017 piece about gender in dance in which he provocatively asks, “Can ballet express a modern view of the sexes?” This piece that visually breaks down just two seconds of a Balanchine dance — an example of how expansive dance criticism can be. A glowing review of the recent world premiere of Pam Tanowitz’s “Four Quartets,” in which he wrote: “If I am right to think this is the greatest creation of dance theater so far this century, we’re fortunate that ‘Four Quartets’ will travel to other stages. I long to become more deeply acquainted with the many layers of its stage poetry.”
The dance world has been lucky to have a committed champion like Alastair, and The Times will miss his voice. But we won’t miss it too much. He will continue to contribute articles and reviews through 2019.
One of the greatest strengths of The New York Times’s Culture department is its big tent philosophy, its ability to cover both popular culture and the fine arts. Dance in all its variety — ballet, modern contemporary concert dance, social dance, commercial dance, dance in music videos — remains a vital part of the culture. Our next chief dance critic will cover it all. We hope to announce our next dance critic later this year.
— Gilbert, Sia and Rachel
———— Gilbert Cruz Culture Editor The New York Times
From the Italian news agency, ANSA:
Young people between 18 and 25 will be able to go to La Scala for two euros starting with the next season at the iconic Milanese opera house, Culture Minister Alberto Bonisoli said Tuesday.
The minister made the announcement after meeting with La Scala Superintendent Alexander Pereira. ‘It’s an initiative aimed at the new generations who often consider culture with scepticism or because they experience malaise, culture is not a solution but it can help,’ Bonisoli said.
The plan has been proposed to Italy’s other 14 opera foundations and they have all accepted, he said.
In other reports, La Scala said it would hold 100 seats for young people at 2 Euros for 15 opera nights, 7 ballet.
Irina Shostakovich, the composer’s widow, will attend tonight’s Chicago Symphony performance of the Babi Yar Symphony at the invitation of music director Riccardo Muti.
Dmitri Shostakovich is said to have kept in his drawer a tape of Muti’s 1970 performance of the symphony.
The veteran film composer, who turns 90 in November, says he will write no more scores.
But he’s going to carry on conducting, he tells Italian media.
He will be remembered for The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and so much more.
A lawyer for the Baltimore Symphony concertmaster Jonathan Carney has called a harassment charge by principal oboe Katherine Needleman ‘nonsense’.
Neil Ruther told CBS that Carney asked Needleman for a relationship in 2005. He showed up at her hotel room and left after approximately five minutes, bearing no malice.
Carney’s lawyer says Needleman is trying to harm his client. Her complaint has gone to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Needleman has published her version of events on social media:
Today, I finally named my harasser publicly. It is the scariest thing I have ever done.
When I was appointed Principal Oboist of the Baltimore Symphony, it was a dream come true. It is a rare opportunity to get a job playing first oboe in a world-class orchestra, much less in one’s own hometown. My first couple of years were blissful. The past 13 have been anything but, as I have endured constant hostility from the orchestra’s leader and highest-ranking player, concertmaster Jonathan Carney, as retaliation for declining to have sex with him in 2005 and reporting him to management. As described in my Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charge, Mr. Carney came to my hotel room during an international tour in 2005 and asked to “complete our onstage relationship” by entering into a “sexual relationship.” This was a matter that I found appalling and offensive. Mr. Carney was married to his first wife with three children at the time. Once I rebuffed Mr. Carney, he began treating me very differently, disparaging and embarrassing me in front of my colleagues. I quickly brought to this BSO management’s attention, but the HR director at the time concluded that Mr. Carney had no reason to lie when he denied asking me for sex and making other lewd comments. BSO’s more recent investigations revealed that Mr. Carney lied in the first investigation, but imposed no consequences. Indeed, BSO even suggested I engage in mediation with Mr. Carney. Emboldened by the courage of so many others, and after years of frustrated attempts to have my complaints taken seriously, I have now filed a complaint with the EEOC. Only after retaining counsel this year did the BSO decide to reinvestigate my complaint, but despite corroborating much of what I reported, BSO has responded only by issuing a sexual harassment policy for musicians for the first time in late April 2018 and essentially admonishing Mr. Carney to behave better in the future.
I am privileged because I am a principal player with tenure and can speak out, as difficult as it is. I am afforded certain protections others are not. Sadly, as discussed in my EEOC charge, I believe there are other women I have worked with who have been put in the impossible position of being forced to decide whether to decline Mr. Carney’s advances or acquiesce. Declining means, if you are lucky like I am, daily hostility and efforts to undermine your work and authority, combined with physical intimidation and threats. Acquiescing can mean the difference between getting freelance work or not, getting a temporary move up or not, and getting a much-anticipated promotion or not. Acquiescing also is a tacit agreement never to tell what happened for women who value their families and careers.
I seek nothing from my charge besides the restoration of a safe and professional working environment and a new level of respect and accountability from the management and board of the BSO, an organization that relies upon the generosity of public and private support in order to exist.
It is my hope that the BSO takes note of how other orchestras are handling this pervasive problem in our industry, as it is an organization I have loved and admired since I was a small child, and one which I hope to contribute to artistically and professionally for many years to come.
Katherine Needleman Principal Oboist Baltimore Symphony Orchestra September 17, 2018
The winner of the Vladimir Spivakov international competition is Ufa is María Dueñas, 15, a Spanish pupil of the influential Boris Kushnir, who sat on a jury of six. Another jury member was Kushnir’s student, Sergey Dogadin.
The result was said to be unanimous.
Kushnir wins again.
Some 38 years after he joined the London Symphony Orchestra, Lennox Mackenzie last night hung up his bow.
In that time, he often sat in the leader’s seat, both on stage and off. He was the orchestra’s chairman from 1988 to 1992 and again from 2004 to 2016, the longest such tenure in its history. The conductors he worked with extend from Claudio Abbado, Colin Davis and Andre Previn to Valery Gergiev, Pierre Boulez and Simon Rattle.
Before joining the LSO, Lennie was a founder member of the Arditti Quartet, then at the cutting edge of contemporary chamber music. I remember how chuffed the LSO were to have snagged him.
We were working on the opening of the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. She was one of a handful of older students of mine – already in a career, but taking auditions and playing concerts – she wants a little finishing help and advice. It was beautifully played, as always – clean, smart, well-prepared. But we have been, these last years, working on inhibition – honesty and truth – what are the notes asking of us – can we let go of everything and do those things it tells us to, no matter how intimate, inappropriate, even violent – no matter that the things it asks of us will never occur in our lives, things we would never dare to do and yet sometimes want to do.
As musicians, we struggle with the concepts of id, ego and super-ego. In a nutshell, I mean that we are in a system where we have thousands of detailed, external rules – things which must be followed microscopically – the super-ego of classical music – those societal restraints, deeply embedded and followed – we are petrified of even approaching a line over which would be something inappropriate (think for a moment how you feel about Kopatchinskaja). That is where this student is. The internalization of cultural rules. And she does it beautifully.
But in classical music – isn’t it the struggle between the id and the ego which drives us onward? Those illicit feelings – Brahms and Schumann both filling their music with Clara – her hand inside, around, throughout every single piece of music either of them published. Her edits, but also her heart and intellect. Her defining fifth – the Clara sigh – boldly put at the beginning of Schumann 3rd string quartet, everywhere – and also in broad daylight in Brahms. But also hidden, woven inside, twisted into unbridled passions and desperate pleas. Things they never dared to do. What happened between Johannes and Clara, when they took their one-and-only trip together, to the mountains in Switzerland right after Robert‘s death? She later burned her diaries and letters from that period – although the stacks and stacks of letters and diaries remain from the rest of her life. I hear this vacation at the end of the slow movement of Brahms 51/2 – this is there one and only moment of privacy – he is saying please please….please – and she is saying – the children, Robert, Syphilis……. with the complications of their lives swirling around them, obscuring their words, reigning in passions, does the ego overcomes the id? The door shuts.
The id – that rustic, guttural desire, the uncomplicated animalistic instincts – to kill, to procreate – impulse, action without a moment‘s thought of repercussion. That is what classical music is. The stabbing of a human in Janacek „Kreutzer Sonata“, the whispers and shuffling of feet in Berg‘s Lyric Suite – the name of his mistress written in code, found decades later in a desk drawer – a secret vocal part. Shostakovich and his dangerous dance with politics. But these, somewhat obvious things are not what I am talking about. It is the sentiments directly through the notes which we must open ourselves to – which we must discover and inhabit. We don’t want to have the ego smooth things out – we want pure, unadulterated id.
At night, after I put the girls to bed, I take a tour around the house, putting the markers back in the marker drawer, folding the blankets, straightening the shelves, housewifery business. On occasion, I come across something so sweet and tender – a whole line of small stuffed animals, each intricately wrapped in a scarf or tea-towel, sitting together along the back of a couch. I unwrap, put the scarves away, and the stuffies back in their bin. This is what we have to do to our music. Take each note out, and wrap it in a little blanket. Take care of each one.
I told my student that, although she sounds lovely, I am left feeling cold. Isn’t every note of the opening of Tchaikovsky a warm little stuffed animal? There is no rhythm, just a fluctuating pulse – it is a meandering, comfortable love song, weaving back and forth between desire and satisfaction. There are no rules – there is only you, and your relationship to your imagination, and your ability, through music, to do all the things in life that you won’t ever be able to do, that you can’t even allow yourself to desire. That is why we go to concerts – that is why we practice with such discipline. So that we can break all the rules, and run free. Take each note, and let it speak to you – let it say anything it needs to, wants to.
I asked her ‘didn’t you always want to have a boyfriend who would hold your hand when you walk down the street?’ She said yes. ‘Well, now you do, you have anything you want – it is our gift from Tchaikovsky, and your gift to your audience – it is what they deserve, and why they come to concerts – don’t worry about what you were taught, the boundaries or rules – that is all behind you.
‘Now you make your own rules.’
It’s the first showing of Meyerbeer’s opera in Paris since its centenary in 1936, and bits keep falling off.
Now Bryan Hymel has called in sick. Yosep Kang will replace him in the role of Raoul de Nangis.
We hear that Sherry Sylar, associate principal oboe, has been rostered for the big occasion in the enforced absence of the Philharmonic’s #1 oboe, Liang Wang.
There has been no further disclosure on the firing of two musicians, except a clarification that it relates to a number of incidents over a considerable period.
The timing of the dismissals could hardly have been worse – on the eve of the inaugural concert of a new music director, Jaap Van Zweden – and the Philharmonic as a group are getting on with their business in a slightly artificial state of suspended animation.
Klaus Florian Vogt, who sang Walther von Stolzing in Bayreuth’s Meistersinger this summer, has dropped out of the same role at the Bavarian State Theatre next week.
His replacement is the Stuttgart tenor, Daniel Kirch.
