They don’t get bigger than Siemens, and Siemens have had enough.
Four years of the video wall on the Green Hill failed to deliver the commercial impact the electronics giant expected, so the plug is being pulled. Now. Without notice. ‘We’re looking at other projects and told the festival management so months ago, ‘ is what Siemens said through tight lips.
Bayreuth said nothing.
Here’s Die Welt on the subject.
A while back, in the Wall Street Journal, I described the sad history of James Levine at the Boston Symphony Orchestra:
Boston has yet to recover from Levine’s vacillation.
That sorry story is now being repeated at his main stronghold, the Metropolitan Opera, which has dithered from one health episode to the next over the past 11 years without confronting the obvious and the necessary. It needed to put in place a successor strategy and failed to do so. The Met has officially ascribed Levine’s latest withdrawal to a mishap, a fall in the street, telling the New York Times:
He had a major operation last year for spinal stenosis, or compression of the spinal cord, and two follow-up surgeries, Mr. Gelb said he had canceled Tuesday’s rehearsal, which was to have been the conductor’s first day back, just the night before. “I didn’t want it to come out in dribs and drabs,” he added. “I wasn’t exactly sure what his condition was.”
That seems, at the least, disingenuous. Two people close to James Levine have told me he is suffering from uncontrollable shaking as a result of his various condition. The musical world owes him an enormous debt for his 40 years at the Met and wishes him well in his time of trouble.
But the runes here are blindingly clear. James Levine is in no fit condition to conduct. It will take a miracle for him to return. There is a musical vacuum at the Met. It cannot be allowed to prevail for long.
The Guardian today printed Steven Isserlis’s letter denouncing the attack on the Israel Philharmonic at the BBC Proms.
It held the letter for five days until two ‘balancing’ responses could be published from confirmed opponents of Israel. I guess that coforms to the paper’s editorial line.
Here‘s the link.
An article in cracked.com, which purports to be ‘America’s Only Humor Site Since 1958’ (anyone see any .coms around in 1958?) enumerates ‘5 Bizarre Dark Sides to Modern Orchestras’.
Oh, yeah….
Its picture below, credited to the Getty agency, purports to show members of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra high on performance-enhancing drugs.
Is that really so? Do we believe these are orchestral players after a concert? Anyone recognise them? Is this really the home-loving BBC Phil? Did cracked.com get that information from a Getty caption. If it did, the BBC lawyers should be getting onto Getty’s long tail without a moment’s delay.
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LATER: I have searched the Getty website and cannot find the image. If it’s not Getty, maybe it’s not the BBC Phil. The plot thickens.
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LATER STILL: I am officially informed by the BBC Philharmonic that these are not their players. Nobody has identified them as classical musicians at all. Lawyers are making the appropriate noises to Getty and cracked.com. I hope to update with further information.
I’ve just had the link to the redesign of Norway’s Klassisk magazine, and it’s a stunner. Look here:
KlassiskMagasin Klassisk Musikkmagasin 03-2011
Not only is the layout icebox Nordic chic, easy on the eye, but you can flip the pages one by one as you browse from start to finish. I haven’t had this much fun with a music magazine since … I dunno, maybe since Gramophone came out in black when Karajan died.
