The BBC Proms were greeted with the biggest-ever burst of tweets and blogs today – not just because the world’s gone mad on social media but because the content this year feels exceptionally buzzy and live.
There’s a comedy night, for instance, and a performance of what might claim to be a bigger symphony than Mahler’s eighth – Havergal Brian’s Gothic.
But the event that got me leaping out of my seat is a late-night extempore concert given by Ivan Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra on September 2. Apparently, Ivan hands around sheets with about 300 named works on them and the audience get to choose what they want to hear.
Interactive, or what? Can we tweet in our choices? That would be so summer of 2011…
Some months ago I received a Facebook message from a bright young artist complaining that his agent understood neither him nor his instrument.
He wanted to make direct contacts with the BBC Proms and record industry with some specific propositions that seemed to me both viable and attractive. I sent him the email addresses of two people I thought might be of like mind and was nicely thanked for my modest intervention.
The end result, announced today, is that
Mahan Esfehani will be giving the first solo harpsichord recital in the 116-year history of the Proms. It’s on July 18 at Cadogan Hall, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.
The agent, by the way, said: ‘well, that negates us, doesn’t it?’
Guess so.
photo: (c) Marco Borggreve, all right reserved (borrowed with permission from Mahan’s website)
The Berlin Philharmonic 3-D performance of Mahler’s first symphony and Rachmaninov Symphonic Dances goes on release in 60 cinemas around the UK in May.
It is an opportunity to witness one of the world’s great orchestras at the peak of its form in a technology that is evidently
too challenging for Bayreuth.
My reservation, expressed last week on the BBC’s
PM programme, is: at what cost? The Berlin Philharmonic is the most heavily subsidised orchestra on earth, by the state, the city and some very blue-chip sponsors.
They can afford to have themselves filmed in 3-D and put around the world at at time when other orchestras are suffering severe cuts and several – Syracuse in upstate New York is the latest – are going to the wall.
One orchestral manager described this initiative to me as ‘cultural imperialism’.
Your views?
Here’s some video:
And here’s the press release:BERLINER PHILHARMONIKER – A MUSICAL JOURNEY IN 3DTO BE SHOWN IN CINEMAS ACROSS THE UK FROM MAY 9THwww.amusicaljourney3d.comSIR SIMON RATTLE CONDUCTS MAHLER & RACHMANINOVIt is almost 100 years since the Berliner Philharmoniker became the first orchestra to record. Since 1913, it has been at the cutting edge of technological developments like broadcasting concerts, recording complete symphonies and operas on Schellack, Longplay and later Compact Discs – always using the latest techniques. What better orchestra than the Berliner Philharmoniker to be the first to bring concerts to cinemas in 3D?HELGE GRUENEWALD, ARTISTIC ADVISOR, BERLIN PHILHARMONICWith their latest digital venture Berliner Philharmoniker – A Musical Journey In 3D, the Berlin Philharmonic is reviving the great tradition of filming classical concerts. A cinema first A Musical Journey enables audiences not only to experience the concert from the front row of the stalls but – thanks to 3D – from a seat in the middle of the Orchestra.Arguably the finest orchestra in the world, the Berlin Philharmonic under the baton of principal conductor Sir Simon Rattle will be heard performing Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances. Mahler’s First Symphony is filmed in Singapore’s spectacular Esplanade Concert Hall, whereas for Symphonic Dances the producers, together with director Michael Beyer and cameraman and co-director Tomas Erhart, have developed a series of miniature stories based on the composer’s original titles for the movements “midday, sunset, midnight” that translate the music into magnificent 3D scenes.Director Michael Beyer commented “The change between the two settings ‘orchestra’ and ‘Singapore’ respond to the tunes, tempi and dance impulses of Rachmaninov’s score. Chinatown, breathtaking Western architecture and the Hindu temple in 3D together with all aspects of life, work, leisure and spirituality make the spectator believe that he is not only an observer, but in the middle of music and life.”As many as eight 3D and HD cameras were used in making this film, together with cranes, dollies and tracks. The cameramen came from Germany, the technology and technicians from Tokyo and New York. This large-scale project also received considerable local support in terms of personnel and equipment, with as many as 50 people working on the sets at any one time.Berlin Philharmoniker : 2Funded by the Media Board of Berlin-Brandenburg and STB, Berliner Philharmoniker – A Musical Journey In 3D is distributed by Arts Alliance Media and will be shown in 64 cinemas from Poole to Dundee between Monday May 9th and Sunday May 29th.
Well, a man has to go when a man has to go.
So there I was at the IAMA urinals, stuck between two classical music biz fixers and going, as it were, with the flow.
Now there are good agents and bad agents, and they are often one and the same person, showing one face or the other as the situation demands.
I had just heard one of them declare that in 46 years he had thought of nothing but how to help his artists get their talent to the widest possible audience, oblivious to his recent efforts to
sell the whole batch of them into corporate bondage.
An oxymoron? A contradiction in terms?
Not at all. He was being perfectly true to himself and his chameleon occupation.
It so happened that an eminent concert artist, past winner of the Tchaikovsky Competition, had put in a request to attend our
IAMA session. The answer was No. Plain No.
The music business does not like artists to see it all unbuttoned. That’s why slipped disc is obliged to perform a natural function between the two dichotomies.
As if I needed to tell you that…
