The Channel 4 documentary on classical musicians who were derailed by drink or drugs went out last night at 11pm.

The underlying story was familiar – a picture of intolerable pressures of high performance – and some of the personal accounts plumbed a deep well of human sympathy.

But the persistent intrusiveness of the medium, the delve for tragic details, verged on the worst excesses of reality TV. It left us feeling with a sensation that both musicians and viewers were being subtly exploited in the service of other agendas – the broadcaster’s obligation to fill its arts quotient, the LSO’s to show public service and the advertisers to be cast somehow as benefactors.

It was not a good feeling.

What did you think?

Package offer from that high-class establishment, the Imperial Hotel, Vienna:
Maestro in the Making, Hotel Imperial (Vienna, Austria)

Ivory tinklers can channel their inner Mozart (or at least try) during this two-night Maestro in the Making package at Vienna’s Hotel Imperial.

Music lovers join forces with a Viennese composer to create their own piece of music before it’s played and recorded onto a CD.

For an additional fee, the piece can be performed by the Vienna Philharmonic.

Hotel Imperial; +43 (1) 501 100; from $32,000 for two people

The body of Brian Webb, a New Zealander who conducted the Vermont Philharmonic since 1976, has been found half a mile out at sea after his wife reported him missing. Brian, 65, had spent the night out on his sailboat. He was an experienced sailor and a faculty member of Union Institute and University.

The Bayreuth exile, now running the Beethoven Festival in Bonn, has been sounding off about the problem with festivals. Much of what she says can be applied equally to the Met, or to any other large cultural institution in the early 21st century.

Here’s the quote:

All festivals today are striving desperately for a USP. This might be a composer, a musical genre, a landscape, a building, a location. At the same time, no festival organizer can escape the levelling effect of the cultural industry on the one hand and public austerity policies on the other. Without Celebrity Artists the houses remain empty, but most stars offer routine (repertoire), as part of a tour. We don’t engage those artists, or else we threaten them with a quota and red pencils.

Still, there are ways. What I’m saying is, you have to try to stand out by strict dramaturgy of programmes, you try to smuggle something rare and unknown into the familiar repertoire, and you stay alert to social and contemporary trends. Without imagination and courage, nothing works. But without endurance and fund-raising energy, there’s nothing, either. 

Alle Festivals heute streben verzweifelt nach dem “Alleinstellungsmerkmal”. Das kann ein Komponist sein, eine Musikrichtung, eine Landschaft, ein Bauwerk, eine Location. Zugleich entkommt kein Veranstalter den Gleichmachereien, wie sie durch die Kulturindustrie einerseits und die Folgen öffentlicher Sparpolitik andererseits gegeben sind. Ohne “Promi-Künstler” bleiben die Häuser leer, Promi-Künstler aber liefern häufig Routine, sind halt auf Tournee. Engagieren wir sie nicht, drohen “Quote” und Rotstift. Dennoch gibt es Wege, und ich bleibe dabei: Man versuche, durch stringente Programm-Dramaturgie aufzufallen, man versuche, Raritäten und Unbekanntes in das gewohnte Repertoire einzuschmuggeln, man bleibe sich unserer Gesellschaft und Gegenwart bewusst. Ohne Phantasie und Mut geht da nichts. Aber ohne Ausdauer und Schwung beim Einwerben von Geldern auch nicht …

Mezzo Jamie Barton, popular winner of BBC’s Cardiff Singer of the World, is a late jump-in for San Francisco’s Norma.

Daveda Karanas has withdrawn in mid-rehearsals ‘for personal reasons’. Jamie will sing Adalgisa from September 5 opposite Sondra Radvanovsky’s Norma.