The National Symphony Orchestra is being restricted in its use of the Kennedy Center during the absurd Government shutdown. So it’s heading down town and playing around Capitol Hill.
If it wasn’t for real, it would make a good farce. Read Anne Midgette here.
UPDATE: The NSO have asked us to clarify that the hours it uses the Center for rehearsal are unaffected by the shutdown. ‘However, members of the public who want to visit the memorial without seeing performances are certainly affected. The building does not open to the general public until an hour before the earliest scheduled performance.’
Press release: (WASHINGTON, D.C.): The National Symphony Orchestra will make Capitol Hill and H Street, NE, the focus of its free community engagement activities in January 2014. Between January 7 and 13, members of the NSO will break into small ensembles to perform chamber music and educational activities as requested by 20 community organizations. The events will include three orchestral concerts, one at Atlas Performing Arts Center and two at Union Station.
London’s South Bank is a site where the rich go to hear music and the homeless huddle beneath the building for shelter.
A bunch of artists – Lucy Crowe, Christopher Maltman, Michael Collins and Streetwise Opera – are putting on a a gig to raise money for a homeless charity.
Concert details here. Support in any way you can right here.
Classic FM has launched a smash-and-grab raid on one of Radio 3’s primes assets, the early music singer and presenter, Cate Bott.
Read all about it here.
Tony Britten made a feature film about the schooldays of the great composer (who is no relation). It’s an absorbing work, focusing on an untouched aspect of the composer’s development. TV companies invested in the production. But British television? Here’s what happened, told exclusively by Tony to Slipped Disc.
There are only two mainstream broadcasters to go to with a project like this – ITV has virtually no arts coverage, Five has none and Channel 4 are quite clear that they are not interested in ‘the past’ – sad, but at least consistent. So that leaves the BBC and Sky Arts, a channel that I have been making music and arts films for some years. They were initially very enthusiastic and we agreed a deal in principle which would enable me to release in cinemas prior to Sky’s UK broadcast. This had always been my plan, since I wanted audiences to enjoy the film as part of a shared experience during the centenary celebration and I was sure that funds for a full broadcast commission would not be forthcoming.
Unfortunately, the senior Sky person charged with taking us through the next stage immediately went on extended sick leave. Responsibility for my project was handed to someone who didn’t seem quite so convinced of its validity and after many fruitless calls and emails, she decided that I couldn’t afford to make the film. This decision seemed to be more based on industry convention than reality – filming at Gresham’s School, where Britten was a pupil and where his pacifism was moulded was by far the biggest chunk of the budget and it cost us nothing, as Gresham’s are de facto co- producers and charged us no facility fees. The Sky editor asked me to make a ‘conventional’ documentary, I chose to make the film I wanted to make and we parted company, with our slot swiftly replaced by a Tony Palmer film.
I took the project to the BBC, but their music department does seem to stick to the same very small group of film makers – laudably loyal, but not much use for those not in that group. The BBC was clear that whilst they liked my idea, they were committed to two films already. These turned out to be John Bridcut’s soon to be broadcast ‘Endgame’ and Margaret William’s Britten/Pears love story, now postponed. (Why, we wonder?)
We were by now into early summer of last year and decided to go ahead regardless. My distributor, Reiner Moritz, passionate about the project, conjured up television pre-sales from STV Australia, NRK Norway and YLE Finland. The Britten Pears Foundation gave us a small grant and the balance came from the government tax credit, private equity and crucially – crowd funding. The shoot was a joy, from discovering the extraordinary talented Alex Lawther, who plays young Ben to filming artists James Gilchrist, Iain Burnside, Raphael Wallfisch and exceptional younger talents such as Jake Arditti, Gerard Collett and the Benyounes Quartet. All of these, as well as the Gresham’s school musicians gave unstintingly to the project. I was also encouraged immeasurably by the support of John Hurt, who agreed to narrate the film at script stage.
I was able to incorporate more factual detail, some of which has never been explored and interviews with people such as Joseph Horovitz, Sue Phipps and the remarkable Auschwitz survivor Anita Lasker add considerable depth to the narrative.
To date, the film has been seen on 64 screens theatrically in the UK, including 14 of the Picturehouse cinema chain. It is due imminently to be released in German cinemas. It has achieved further broadcast sales in Mexico, Slovenia, Russia, Estonia, Croatia, Switzerland and Austria, with more to be confirmed after the Midem trade fair.
But in the UK? Unless you were able to see it at a cinema, ‘Peace and Conflict’ will only be available to you on DVD, released Monday 7th October. If we do very well with DVD sales we may just break even, if we don’t – we won’t. Do I regret going it alone? No – I made the film I wanted to make and I’m thrilled that it was part of such a wonderful celebration of Britten’s genius. Will I take future projects to broadcasters? Probably, but I do have concerns:
I don’t agree with Tony Palmer’s recent comments about the rudeness and arrogance of commissioning editors at the BBC – largely because I don’t seem to be able to get near enough to them to make a value judgement! (Some might say that Tony’s indictment is a little ironic). I also don’t necessarily agree that commissioners ‘would not know a good programme if it hit them in the face’. But it is the case that the recent increase in funding to Sky Arts is accompanied by a directive that ratings must be boosted – which is in direct contradiction to what Sky networks boss Sophie Turner Laing said in an interview only a couple of years ago. I think Sophie is very good news, but the core audience won’t be fooled by an increase in ‘star casting’ on the channel and film makers won’t be pleased by a further extension of the commissioning ‘hub’ whereby decision makers with limited experience of the arts are sometimes empowered beyond their remit.
I also worry that Tony Hall’s much vaunted announcement, due on Tuesday 10th October that there will be a substantial increase in BBC television funding for the arts may yet compromised by an increase in administration and a decrease in informed and impartial decision making. I would also contend that digging into the Shakespeare archives and piggy backing on to other institutions such as the National Theatre and the British Museum is emphatically not the same as creating an environment where original music and arts films can prosper. We shall see.
As for ‘Benjamin Britten – Peace and Conflict’, if people buy the DVD’s, we at Capriol Films will continue making passion fuelled projects until the forces of the ever more commercialised market finally force us out of the marketplace.
Tony Britten www.benjaminbrittenfilm.co.uk
Congratulations to Vasily Petrenko and his wife Evgenia on the birth of Anna Petrenko, born in Wirral on Tuesday evening, weighing 6lb 9oz. She is the couple’s second chld, after a son, Sasha.
Vasily, music director in Liverpool and Oslo, was recently in trouble for making anti-feminist comments. We feel sure that Anna will set him right.
A bizarre and wildly misinformed article by the Telegraph critic Ivan Hewitt has topped the Google search for ‘orchestra’ for the past week. No need to read the article, the headline says it all: ‘US orchestras are greedy and overpaid’.
It was only a matter of time before a response came from Bruce Ridge, Chairman of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (by ‘international, we think they mean Canada). (Update: we are advised that ICSOM is not a union but a lobby organisation).
Ridge rightly castigates Hewitt for misinformation – linking Los Angeles Philharmonic wages, for instance, to a ‘mounting deficit’. Actually, the LAPO is in surplus. Ridge has further swipes at NPR’s coverage of the Minnesota disaster among other deficiencies, before ruining his own case by proclaiming The Failure of Arts Journalism at a Time of Cultural Need.
Get real, Bruce. The failure lies on both sides of the Minnesota dispute to reach agreement, in an American system that is innately confrontational and is long overdue for reform if music and orchestras are to survive far into the present century.
You’ve read it here before. Start listening, Bruce, then let’s talk.
The Canadian author wins 900,000 Euros. The Swedish Academy, unable to get hold of her, left a phone message.
Her Wikipedia entry, instantly updated, says her father was ‘a fox and poultry farmer’. Can’t have been both, surely?
Wonder what Hélène Grimaud thinks…
The noble house of Steinway & Sons (now owned by ignoble speculators) are putting Richard Wagner’s little beauty on display in Munich this week, with a none-too subtle advertising undertow. Here’s the lovely thing.
And here’s the provenance:
Viewing details here.
The instrument played by America’s most influential violin teacher is on the auction block this month. Expect the hammer to fall just short of $2million.
Dorothy DeLay taught at Juilliard from 1948 to her death in 2002. Her pupils included Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Nigel Kennedy, Sarah Chang, Gil Shaham and Kyung-Wha Chung.
With Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and the mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, Miss DeLay put Kansas on the musical map.
Most singers say that, sooner or later, it gets them in the knees.
René Kollo says he got fed up. He tells Bunte magazine: ‘Ich mag nicht mehr. Ich höre auf.’ He will give four church concerts by way of farewell.
Kollo, born René Kollodzieyski in Berlin, ruled the Wagner tenor roles in the 1970s and 1980s. He sang Siegfried in the unforgettable centennial Bayreuth Ring of 1976, directed by the late Patrice Chéreau.
